To publicize the use of fat as an alternative method of harvesting stem cells to grow new human tissue, Austin, Texas, plastic surgeon Dr. Robert Ersek, who is overweight, called in reporters in August to watch as he liposuctioned 1-1/2 pounds of his own fat from the left side of his abdomen. As Ersek (under local anesthetic) moved the vacuuming wand inside his body, he urged people to save their fat for the time (maybe five years from now) in which stem-cell work will be routine. (Ersek said he would leave the right side of his abdomen as is, to show liposuction candidates a "before" and "after.")

Judging by sales figures for two recent products, Japanese men and women have either too much free time or not nearly enough because now selling briskly in pet shops are ants and shrimp. The Antquarium is a six-ant farm that uses a self-sustaining nutritional gel instead of sand, and the Holo Holo is basically a plastic box containing five deep-water scarlet shrimp packaged in nutritional algae-water. Each sells for the equivalent of about US$30. One satisfied customer told the Japan Times, "As I live on my own, I wanted to have pets that are easy to take care of."

With cameras from the "Cops" TV show rolling, an Evansville, Ind., police dog chasing a gunman in a retirement home suddenly leaped on innocent bystander John Terry and bit his right arm before he was pulled off (August). And a 10-year-old Komodo dragon in heat accidentally plunged to her death off a wall in the London Zoo trying to get to her mate (August).

(1) Jacob Hadad and his "witness," David Mullem, were charged with perjury in Long Beach, Calif., in July after they refused to budge from their testimony in Hadad's challenge to a camera-generated traffic ticket. Hadad said he was forced to run a red light because a maniacal driver was chasing him, and Mullem, his "passenger," backed him up. However, the camera revealed no car chasing Hadad and no passenger in his car. (2) Similarly, Shaun Woodhouse, caught on camera speeding in Northrop, Wales, admitted in June owning a car of the same model and color and license plate number as in the photo, but said nonetheless, "It was not my car, and it was not me driving." (He was convicted.)

In April, the St. Augustine (Fla.) Record announced the opening of artist Andrea Giovanni's exhibit on behalf of The Betty Griffin House, a local shelter for battered women; eight days later, the same newspaper carried news of Giovanni's arrest for allegedly beating up her boyfriend and trying to run him over with her car. And in a feature in the July 2004 Smithsonian magazine on the work of ecology-minded architect Paolo Soleri, who advocates that people form smaller, efficient, high-density residential communities to help conserve the environment, it was revealed that Soleri himself lives on a five-acre ranch near Scottsdale, Ariz., housing a bell foundry and several buildings.

-- Searching for ways to convey law enforcement professionalism to the Iraqi police, Marine MP Company C in Camp Al Asad, Iraq, developed a costumed mascot, "Farid the Crime-Fighting Falcon" (patterned after the famous "take a bite out of crime" dog, McGruff, but using an animal they believe the Iraqis better respect). Cpl. Justin Weber has the easy job, putting on the falcon suit; his comrades have the more difficult task of explaining to their classes just how Farid fits into effective law enforcement.

-- Police in Niles, Ohio, were called to the house of a 50-year-old man in July, having received complaints that the home might be one of those increasingly common ones that the resident loses control of, littered with garbage and vermin and reeking of urine and feces. Zoning inspector Anthony Vigorito did declare the home unfit for human habitation, but gave the resident credit for trying to improve things: The man had gone to the trouble of installing a porta-john in the middle of his living room.

Palestinian Authority legislators disclosed in July that some local businessmen, aided by Palestinian officials, made huge profits by selling low-priced cement (provided at discount by Egypt to support its Muslim brothers) to Israelis at huge markups, even though they knew the cement was destined to be used in the controversial "security wall" Israel is erecting in the West Bank.

Bobbie Lynne Warren, 44, was charged in Nevada City, Calif., with several gun violations, and according to sheriff's deputies interviewed by The Union newspaper, it was a lively arrest. Warren allegedly admitted shooting at her boyfriend, Kevin Denson, because after 18 years, he still refuses to marry her (although she denied firing a handgun, insisting it was a rifle, in that she is an ex-felon barred from holding handguns). One deputy said Warren insisted that he tell her why no one had ever proposed to her, and on the way to jail asked him directly if he would propose to her.

Accused bank robber Stephen C. Jackson, 35, was arrested after violating the rule that a criminal on the lam should try to keep a low profile. He was spotted standing calmly at the Ultimate Car Wash in Lakewood, Ohio, on Aug. 18 feeding one red-dye-stained dollar bill after another into the coin changer, which bystanders found suspicious in that his pockets were bulging with quarters (about 1,800 in his trousers). Police tied him to the robbery earlier in the day of a Charter One bank in Cleveland.

Once again, a kid survived with minimal aftereffects after being impaled by a stake that completely penetrated his chest. (Jason Curtis, 9, was bouncing on a trampoline in Camanche, Iowa, in August and came down on the stake, which entered through his left armpit and barely missed vital organs, but he lifted himself off the stake and walked for help.) And once again a clerk (this time at the Fashion Bug store in Greensburg, Pa.) not only accepted an obviously bogus piece of currency (a "$200" bill featuring a likeness of President Bush), but also gave the customer back change (on a $99 purchase) (August). (Note: Yes, Greensburg is the same town featured in News of the Weird last week as the home of the accused toe-kisser and the middle-aged man who dresses as a cheerleader.)

In August, a sightseeing boat taking some society-type guests of the Chicago Architecture Foundation down the Chicago River crossed under the Kinzie Street bridge just as a bus passed over and apparently released its sewage container through the bridge's grating, directly onto the boat's passengers. Police subsequently charged a driver for a bus belonging to the Dave Matthews Band, but the band claimed its buses were not in the area at the time.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A Texas school board refused to allow a boys' hair-growing campaign to donate for wigs to support hair-losing cancer patients, citing school rules against long hair for boys. (b) A misbehaving monkey in India was sentenced to life in an official government monkey prison, joining a dozen other simians declared incorrigible. (c) A man in Seville, Spain, filed a domestic-abuse complaint against his wife for turning him down for sex for five consecutive days. (d) Its budget depleted until the new fiscal year in October, the District of Columbia government said the public could copy official documents in September only if they lugged their own copy machines and paper into a government reading room.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

The unassuming town of Greensburg, Pa. (pop. 16,000, just east of Pittsburgh), was the site of two high-profile arrests recently. In July, James Kilpatrick, 21, was suspected as the man responsible for several toe-kissing incidents, including one underneath a public library table, when he allegedly kissed the feet of a 12-year-old girl and asked if he could kiss her liver. In September, Robert Domasky, 48, who cross-dresses as "Kelly," was charged with trespassing (and suspected of identity theft) after "Kelly" was found outside the girls' locker room at Greensburg Salem High School looking for the cheerleading coach. The 200-pound Domasky said he merely wanted her to teach him some cheers. In Domasky's apartment, police found cheerleader magazines and uniforms, pompoms, and photos of "Kelly" in cheerleader garb.

Self-described conservative Republican Larry Schwarz, formerly a legislator and parole board member in Colorado, was profiled in the Rocky Mountain News in August for his successful new career as warehouse manager and bookkeeper for his stepdaughter's pornography business. The stepdaughter had retired as a porn actress (name: "Jewel DeNyle") and formed Platinum X Pictures, Canoga Park, Calif., also employing her mother. Schwarz said he still believes in the Republican ideals of self-reliance, lower taxes and individual freedom, and believes also that he is perfectly well demonstrating "family values."

Under Manitoba courts' interpretation of Canada's Youth Criminal Justice Act, no part of a youth's sentence can be for the purpose of "deterrence." Consequently, Judge Ronald Meyers in August sentenced two teenagers (with 22 prior convictions between them) for three armed robberies, sending them away for eight and six months, respectively, plus some community service. Judge Meyers made the news in 2003 when he sentenced a 15-year-old who had admitted repeatedly, fatally beating a boy in the head with a sock containing a billiards ball to one day in jail (plus probation).

(1) Statues at the Vietnamese Catholic Community Church in Brisbane, Australia, mysteriously began to "bleed" on May 21, bringing pilgrims from around the world to see the "miracle." Even after the Brisbane Archdiocese declared the bleeding a hoax, worshippers defiantly continued to arrive. (2) And in July, a group of 52 breast cancer patients filed a lawsuit against the Rosalind Franklin University of Medicine and Science in Chicago for the school's having discontinued an experimental vaccine program. Even though the school cut the program because it had shown no clinical benefit, patients continue to demand their "vaccine."

-- Acting on a drug informant's tip in 2003, detectives in Waterloo, Iowa, had a police dog "search" a car. The dog started to sniff, and then abandoned his post, but police took the car to the station anyway, where another dog sniffed it and signaled drugs. A search warrant was obtained, and owner Kirk Sallis was arrested for cocaine possession. However, in June 2004, a judge dismissed the charge, ruling that the impound was illegal, in that the first dog never "completed" the initial search, since the dog, part-way through the search, had run off to chase a cat.

-- From the police column of The Union (Grass Valley, Calif.), June 25, 2004: "A (caller) reported that he heard someone screaming and went outside to find a woman lying in the street. When he asked her if she was all right, the man reported, she started yelling at him, ran inside a residence and appeared to be smashing things inside. Police contacted the woman, who said she was just having an argument with herself."

-- LaTonya Finney and her boyfriend, Adrian Howard, somehow managed to become intimate while they were jailed, separately, in 2002 on robbery charges in Crawford County, Ga., with the result being the birth of a daughter, Adrianna. Raising the child has fallen to LaTonya's parents, Ronnie and Patricia Finney, who petitioned the county in July 2004 for financial support for Adrianna because they say the sheriff should have kept Finney and Howard far enough apart to prevent their mating.

-- In July 2003, Russell Weller, 88, made national news when he froze, with his foot on the accelerator, in Santa Monica, Calif., and plowed through a farmer's market, killing 10 people and injuring 63, in the worst of a recent spate of incidents in which senior citizens momentarily confuse the gas and brake pedals. In July 2004, families of two of the dead and nine of the injured beat the statute of limitations by filing lawsuits. Weller is named, but the main targets are the farmer's market, a local farmers' association, the Los Angeles County agriculture commissioner, the city of Santa Monica, and the state of California, all of whom were supposedly careless in allowing Weller to crash into the victims.

Neil Middlehurst, 49, who is blind, was ordered in June by the Kingston (England) Crown Court to refrain from behavior that had provoked numerous complaints from females who had recently helped him cross streets. Middlehurst's apparent modus operandi is to touch women affectionately as they walk, while involved in a short conversation he initiates about sore throats and "phlegm" (and the judge specifically forbade him from using that word).

During the recent trial in Brooklyn, N.Y., at which mob boss Joseph Massino was convicted of various charges, several tales emerged in testimony showing a less-than-efficient crime family. "Good Looking Sal" Vitale, who turned on Massino in the trial (perhaps balancing out "Vinny Gorgeous" Basciano, who remained loyal), admitted that Massino once got angry just before a hit when a nervous Vitale accidentally fired his submachine gun in their closet hiding place while waiting for the victims. Vitale sheepishly acknowledged that Massino immediately took the gun away from him and told him to go just monitor the door.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A South Carolina man robbed a bank armed only with a long pitchfork. (b) Thailand, attempting to acquire fighter jets from Russia, offered to pay for them with chickens. (c) Former weapons inspector Hans Blix, in an interview, said he accepted high-profile, dangerous U.N. missions primarily so he could meet women. (d) A Navy recruiter signed up a rural Alabama woman but then, on a visit to her home, also talked her brother, father and mother into the Reserves. (Answers at end of column.)

In New York City in July, Albert Salcedo became the most recent person to shake a stubborn vending machine, have it fall over on top of him, and then file a claim blaming the machine's owner. (Salcedo had received $30,000 in a previous lawsuit after he fell through a broken fence; both the vending machine and the fence are located at public schools.) And the parents of a 15-year-old boy who died after falling into the Crooked River Gorge in Oregon (because, said rescuers, he was jumping daringly from rock to rock when one broke loose) became the most recent plaintiffs to file a lawsuit blaming the death on those who attempted a rescue.

Emergency medical technicians summoned to the home of a grossly overweight woman in Stuart, Fla., in August had the usual problems removing her (inadequate stretcher, doorways too small), but there was a more serious concern for the 480-pound woman: She had not budged from her couch in several years, and its covering had become grafted onto her skin, requiring her to be transported while on the couch (and the couch surgically removed at Martin Memorial Hospital). (She died in the hospital, of breathing complications.)

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)

Business prospects are improving for Christopher Lindhoist and Arshad Chowdhury, who recently opened their Metronaps lounge on the 24th floor of New York City's Empire State Building and whose clients pay $14 to relieve stress by dozing off for 20 minutes in private, specially made, reclining chair-pods with an array of vibrations and sounds to drown out the hubbub of the city. Chowdhury said he studied the science of napping at Carnegie-Mellon University and found a "tremendous amount of research" showing the rejuvenative value of the short "power nap," which he said improves memory, mood and learning. The Metronaps chair-pods (cost: $8,000) are being separately sold to companies overseas and may soon appear in airport lounges.

Two men and a woman, described in a Cape Times (Cape Town, South Africa) story as loan sharks, brought the corpse of Thozamile Patrick Apolis in a wheelchair into an FNB Provincial bank in June in an attempt to withdraw his pension (signing for it by "helping" Apolis move his hand across the paper), but a skeptical customer, who kept demanding that bank officials check for a pulse, scared off the three, who left the body behind.

Going against the grain of recent court decisions, the federal appeals court in New York ruled in August, 2-1, that when a man died of "autoerotic asphyxiation" (normally, strangling oneself almost to the point of passing out as a way of enhancing pleasure during masturbation, but in some cases, going too far), it was an "accident" rather than a self-inflicted injury. Thus, mom Shirley Critchlow is entitled to death benefits under her son Michael's life insurance policy (but would not have been for a self-inflicted injury).

Arrested and charged with murder: David Wayne Mears (Ludington, Mich., June); Edward Wayne Bryant (Ardmore, Okla., arrested in Houston, August); Kenith Wayne Sherrill (Yakima, Wash., July); Chadwick Wayne Wallace (Alton, Ill., August); Timothy Wayne Johnson (Raleigh, N.C., September). Already serving a life sentence for murder but charged again: Alexander Wayne Watson Jr. (Maryland, convicted of a 1994 murder, but, based on DNA evidence, charged in July with murders in 1986, 1988 and 1993). Already serving a life sentence for murder but convicted of murdering an inmate: Shannon Wayne Agofsky (Beaumont, Texas, July).

-- According to a police report in the Brainerd (Minn.) Dispatch, in August, thieves had broken into the First Integrity Bank on Excelsior Road in Baxter, Minn., but then used a hammer on a common wall in order to break into the adjacent Lakes Area Eyecare store and make off with numerous pairs of sunglasses. (In most such break-ins, crooks use the store to get into the bank, not the other way around.)

-- Federal District Judge Thomas A. Higgins of Nashville, Tenn., had just ordered David Bowman, 41, back to prison for violating his probation (cocaine possession and other offenses), and he asked Bowman if he had anything to say. Instead of asking for leniency, Bowman recited the litany of inconveniences that lay ahead (e.g., crowded bus back to prison, various transfers from bus to bus on the way) and then asked, apparently seriously, if Judge Higgins would please personally drive him back to prison. (To the prosecutor's suggestion that prison would give Bowman "a chance to think," Judge Higgins said, "I think part of the problem is that Mr. Bowman doesn't do as much thinking as maybe (we) would like him to.")

-- New York City judge Laura Blackburne came under fire from the police in June when she helped Derek Sterling (described by police as a "convicted drug dealer" but in a rehab program) escape out a side door of her courtroom so that he could avoid a detective poised to arrest him for a May robbery. She said she was angry that the detective didn't clear the arrest with her in advance. (Blackburne was already notorious for recently releasing a man charged with attempting to kill a police officer, ruling that he had not received a speedy trial.)

-- Cynthia Gorden filed a lawsuit in Chicago in May asking a judge to prevent the airing of her appearance on a "Judge Mathis" syndicated television show (for which litigants audition to appear in person in a raucous courtroom setting, making their arguments and allowing Mathis to render a decision). According to the lawsuit, Gorden, who came on the program to aggressively sue her own mother, said it was the program staff's fault that she wound up embarrassing herself.

The obviously inexperienced Bradley S. Shugars, 21, was arrested and charged with robbing a Phillips 66 gas station in Avon, Ind., with his cousin, Karl D. Carnes. Police found Shugars in the getaway car, awaiting Carnes at another gas station, and quickly got a confession from Shugars, who started to cry. According to the arresting officer, Shugars self-pityingly lamented, "Everybody can rob you, but you can't rob nobody."

German filmmaker (Mr.) Rosa von Praunheim told reporters in July that he will finish by December his movie based on notorious convicted cannibal Armin Meiwes, who is serving eight years in prison following his January conviction for the apparently consensual murder and consumption of a man. "Your Heart in My Brain" (working title) was funded in part by a government film foundation in the German state of North Rhine-Westphalia and begins with Meiwes being confronted in prison by his victim's head, which, according to a Reuters report, encourages Meiwes to take pride in what he has done and to move on to more killing.

Three of these four things really happened, just recently. Are you cynical enough to figure out the made-up story? (a) A British couple who hadn't been able to break their two-pack-a-day cigarette habit gave it up when their pet parrot developed a respiratory illness. (b) A leading British museum announced an experiment to cover a substantial portion of its utility expenses by converting visitors' excrement from museum rest rooms into electricity. (c) A local Islamic extremist organization in France, with ties to al-Qaeda, filed several lawsuits against the city of Paris for what it called "discriminatory tax harassment." (d) Meteorological officials in one Chinese province accused their counterparts in another province of "stealing" "their" clouds, in order to seed them for rain.

In a June profile of Britain's Prince Charles, a columnist for The Guardian newspaper describes, as an example of his increasing isolation from the mainstream of under-age-65 British society, his recent encouragement of people to avoid college and accept learning vocational skills and his enthusiastic promotion of the Gerson Therapy, a widely discredited treatment for cancer patients diagnosed as terminally ill. Among the tenets of the Gerson regimen (which costs $15,000 for three weeks): drinking 20 pounds of liquified fruit and vegetables per day (specially prepared on a "noncentrifugal" juicer that costs $2,000) and taking daily coffee enemas.

Survival Instinct: In September, Jerry Allen Bradford of Pensacola, Fla., had in mind to put his seven German shepherd-mix puppies down because he could not find them homes, and had already shot three and was carrying two other dogs, and his .38-caliber revolver, in his arms. According to a sheriff's report, that's when one of the two condemned dogs managed to press his paw on the trigger, firing and hitting Bradford on the wrist. He was treated at a hospital, and the sharpshooter and his three siblings were placed for adoption.

Thanks This Week to Tanya Olckers, Marc Albert, James Jones, Donna Gasior, Mindy Cohen, Barbara Insidioso, Albert Clawson, Caitlin Richardson-Royer, Chris Menne, Nathan Karnes, Peter Smagorinsky, Don Tyler, James Mohr, Jackie LeGrand, Neil Gimon, Chris Atwell, Charles Onley, Jon Van Essen, Brandee Scheffler, Larry Clunie, and Tim Farley, and to the News of the Weird Senior Advisors (Jenny T. Beatty, Gaal Shepherd Crowl, Paul DiFilippo, Geoffrey Egan, Sam Gaines, Ivan Katz, Barbara McDonald, Matt Mirapaul, Jim Sweeney, and Barbara Tyger); to the News of the Weird Internet News Artists (Dave Beck, John Cieciel, Ginger Katz, Joe Littrell, Victor McDonald, Steve Miller, Paul Music, Kerry O'Conner, Karl Olson, and Bruce Townley); and to the News of the Weird Editorial Advisors (Paul Blumstein, Michael Colpitts, Lance E. Ellisor, Harry Farkas, Leslie Goodman- Malamuth, Fritz Gritzner, Herb Jue, Wolf Kirchmeir, Scott Langill, Myra J. Linden, Bob McCabe, Christopher Nalty, Joel O'Brien, Larry Ellis Reed, Lee Sechrest, Tom Slone, Rob Snyder, Maurine Taylor, H.Thompson, and Jerry Whittle.

(Send your Weird News to Chuck Shepherd, P.O. Box 18737, Tampa FL 33679 or WeirdNews@earthlink.net or go to www.NewsoftheWeird.com.)